There was a deal to fix this Alabama community's raw sewage crisis. Trump tore it up over DEI

The Guardian

7 days ago

Thelma and Willie Perryman spend most days out front of their family trailer in rural Alabama, shooting the breeze while enjoying the birdsong – and making sure their three-year-old grandson doesn't wander into the sewage-sodden back yard.
They used to barbecue on the back porch looking out at the woods on their land until a couple of years back when the contaminated wastewater seeping out from a leaky old pipe got simply unbearable. Willie, 71, ripped out the sinking porch as branches began falling off a towering old hickory tree which is now completely dead and at risk of toppling.
'We have water and electricity now, it's just the waste, the raw fluids on the ground. But the little money that me and my wife get is just to take care of our bills, we can't afford no septic system,' said Willie, a retired janitor with a weak heart and mobility issues. 'This might be the richest country in the world, but we're the little people.'
Here in Alabama's Lowndes county, a majority-Black county with high levels of poverty and a deep civil rights history, an estimated 60% to 80% of households in rural parts do not have a functioning sanitation system. Authorities have known about the raw sewage crisis for decades, which to some extent affects all 67 counties in Alabama.
In 2025, in the richest, most powerful country in the world, many people are still forced to depend on PVC pipes to funnel parasite-infested wastewater from the bathroom and kitchen into hand-dug trenches, fields or wooded areas metres from where they sleep, play and grow vegetables.
It's unclear when or whether the Perryman family will ever get to experience life without the stench of raw sewage after a landmark 2023 civil rights settlement mandating the state to resolve the crisis was terminated by the Trump administration, dismissing it as an 'illegal' diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) agreement. As a result, the state is no longer required to resolve this sanitation crisis – or conduct public health campaigns. It could also restart enforcing sanitation laws that threaten residents without a functioning sewage system with fines and jail time – which the justice department settlement strictly forbade.
The decision is part of Donald Trump's broader assault on all programs, policies and research that seek to tackle systemic and structural inequalities in American life by claiming that they are discriminatory, 'woke' and wasteful.
Ripping up the Lowndes county legal settlement puts the onus back on Alabama lawmakers to remedy the sewage crisis, but it's unclear whether this longstanding public health crisis will be a priority without a federal mandate or funds.
'The money's been taken away so that means we've got to wait another one year, two years … We keep hoping for some help, but we're not getting any younger,' said Thelma Perryman, 74, a retired farmhand who has never lived in a house with a functioning sanitation system.
Charlie King, chair of the Lowndes county commission, said he had been left speechless by the cruelty of the decision: 'Losing the funding will have a devastating effect on the people of the county, who are struggling and don't have no ways to help themselves. This administration is just not concerned about the poor people, whether they are white or Black, poor people, period. They don't have a heart for them.'
Lowndes county is a sprawling, mostly rural area between Selma and Montgomery, where almost three-quarters of the 9,000 or so inhabitants are Black and nearly a third live below the poverty line.
The county is part of what's known as the Alabama Black belt – named for the dark, fertile soil prized for producing cotton during the enslavement and Jim Crow eras, which became synonymous with the brutal trade and treatment of African people by European settler plantation owners.
The scale of the injustices perpetrated was in part why by the mid-1960s Lowndes county had become a major organising hub for the civil rights movement. Stokely Carmichael led the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (Sncc) in organising voter-registration drives and political education classes, later launching the Lowndes County Freedom Organization, the independent Black political party that first adopted the Black Panther as its logo.
The county earned the grim nickname Bloody Lowndes due to the violent white backlash against the students and other Black organisers pushing the US to live up to its promised ideals of equity, rights, liberty, opportunity and democracy for all.
Residents here have struggled with raw sewage and other wastewater problems for generations due to a mix of structural poverty, the waterlogged clay soil that was ideal for growing cotton but makes standard septic tank systems ineffective, and environmental racism by state authorities.
Six decades after Martin Luther King Jr led voting rights marchers through Lowndes county en route from Selma to Montgomery, many of the residents living without basic sanitation are descendants of enslaved cotton pickers – and also have connections to the civil rights struggle.
Nationwide, 20% to 25% of households are not connected to a public sewer, and instead depend on individual septic systems to treat and disperse toilet, bath and other waste water. Private underground septic systems are mostly found in rural areas where municipal systems are unaffordable or impractical, with particularly high concentrations in New England and the deep south. In many places, the climate crisis is adding pressure to septic systems of all kinds due to sea level rise, salt intrusion and increasingly intense rainfall.
There has been progress in Lowndes county, but those in the rural unincorporated areas are lagging way behind, despite initiatives by non-profits with federal, state and private funding that have been difficult to track. Hundreds of homes still have either no sanitation system to deal with human waste or a failing septic system that is easily overwhelmed by rain and even toilet paper, pushing raw sewage back into the sink or bathtub.
Alabama began prosecuting poor, mostly Black residents for noncompliance with sanitation regulations more than two decades ago, even though most families had built their homes before the standards came into force – while others had ended up with unsuitable systems through earlier government programs. At least one woman is known to have been jailed, while many others were cited, fined or mired in court struggles.
Despite mounting evidence of a serious public health crisis and criticism from the UN, it took a civil rights lawsuit brought by a local environmental justice group in 2017 to finally force authorities to do the right thing.
A landmark settlement in 2023 during the Biden administration mandated the state government to stop criminalizing residents unable to afford septic systems and instead work on remedying the indignity.
The settlement was reached after an 18-month justice department investigation found that the Alabama department of public health (ADPH) had systematically failed to tackle the raw sewage – a public health crisis exposing mostly Black, but also low-income white, families, to health hazards such as hookworm, a gastrointestinal parasite most commonly found in parts of sub-Saharan Africa and south-east Asia. Instead, authorities threatened residents with fines, jail time and losing their homes.
It was a historic civil rights victory for environmental justice, and a signal that the Biden administration was willing to take at least some steps to tackle some of the US's deep-seated structural inequalities that have led to people of color, Native Americans and low-income communities being disproportionately exposed to a multitude of environmental harms including raw sewage, lead-contaminated water and toxic air.
In August 2023, the ADPH received $5m from the American Rescue Plan Act (Arpa), Biden's Covid-19 stimulus package, to address sewage problems across the so-called Black belt. Of this, $1.5m was allocated by the state to Lowndes county.
Since then, hundreds of low-income households, including the Perryman family, have finally made it on to a waitlist for a custom-made septic system that would be paid for entirely or partly by federal funds, depending on their economic circumstances. The couple is considered a priority case due to the critical state of seepage, as well as their age and ailing health.
After years of setbacks, the Lowndes County Unincorporated Wastewater Program (LCUWP), a non-profit created by the county commissioners to oversee the assessment and rollout of septic systems, began the task of building trust in a community that has been badly and repeatedly let down.
In April, Trump's justice department tore up the settlement, claiming it violated the president's Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing executive order, which bans federal agencies from pursuing programs or initiatives related to DEI including those dealing with environmental justice.
'Trump says he wants to make America great again, but it was never great for Black people, for the minorities. It's a sad reflection of past times that people in this day and age are still fighting for such basic rights,' said Stephanie Wallace, a community outreach worker with the Center for Rural Enterprise and Environmental Justice (Creej), which launched the civil rights lawsuit that led to the historic settlement. 'Raw sewage on the ground is not DEI.'
The justice department declined to comment.
The Lowndes county decision is part of Trump's broader assault on civil rights and anti-poverty and anti-racism efforts championed by some of his predecessors.
Trump's 2026 budget, signed into law last week, will also have devastating impact on the Black belt communities, where 28% rely on Medicaid, compared with 23% statewide. Hunger rates are also likely to rise given that one in four Alabamians receive Snap benefits, which Trump's new budget also slashes. The state will have to come up with an additional $120m – a 30% increase – to continue providing food assistance for more than 700,000 people, half of whom are children.
Trump won Alabama with 65% of the votes in 2024, but 68% of Lowndes county voted for Kamala Harris.
Alabama's Black belt counties are among the poorest in the US, and in Lowndes county the median income is just $35,000 a year – 57% below the national average, according to the US census. Installing a new septic system is beyond the means of most of those who desperately need one.
The heavy, nonabsorbent clay soil synonymous with the region makes it extremely difficult to install and operate conventional septic tanks, which cost between $10,000 and $15,000, instead requiring custom-engineered systems that can be as expensive as $50,000.
So far, the LCUWP has installed only three septic systems due to the complex soil, poor housing conditions and bureaucratic obstacles – including a cumbersome funding mechanism that requires the non-profit to secure bank credit to pay for everything upfront, and then submit receipts to the state for reimbursement from the Arpa fund. Another 20 are ready to be fitted over the summer.
Clara Hope*, who asked to remain anonymous, is a 68-year-old retired factory worker and widow who lives on a quiet, picturesque country road in the house that she and her husband built 40 years ago, back when they used an outhouse and hauled water.
No matter how hard they worked, the couple could never afford to install a septic system and raise their children, so instead a straight pipe discharges into a cordoned-off field out back of the bungalow, which is lush and green thanks to the seeping sewage fertilizing it.
Hope, who has bronchitis, diabetes and mobility issues, keeps her home clean and tidy but there is a distinct odour – which she can no longer smell on account of being what she calls 'nose blind' after a lifetime of living with raw sewage. But Hope is among the lucky ones who will benefit from the remaining Arpa funds. Her first-ever septic system, which cost $40,000 to engineer, is almost ready to be installed.
'I just felt everything was defeated when Trump canceled the program, like it was going to fall through again and I would be without a septic tank probably until I died. I do feel sorry for those who won't get one but I'm just so happy that finally I'm gonna be able to get mine so the place will be cleaner, and the scent will go,' said Hope.
The remaining Arpa funds will cover another 40 to 50 new septic systems, but there are now almost 150 households on the tier-one priority list who have been deemed poor enough by the ADPH to qualify for a fully funded system – with hundreds more who need help but would be asked to pay a share.
In February, the ADPH allocated another $1.5m to Lowndes county, which came from the state budget and which groups such as the LCUWP can bid for, but this is still not enough.
'There's a lot of mistrust among the community that has grown from past betrayals, and we know there are still people with needs who have not yet applied for septic systems. I personally felt disappointed and discouraged by the decision to cancel the settlement, as we have to let people down again,' said Carmelita Arnold, who runs the LCUWP and whose role now includes chasing other potential funding so the project doesn't collapse.
Arnold is worried that the state could lose interest, now that the federal government no longer cares. 'We had more support when the DoJ was backing it. And now that they're not, it's like almost going back to what it was before,' she said.
According to an ADPH spokesperson, 'the termination of the DoJ agreement has not changed any of the ADPH work in Lowndes county'. The department does not know how many households in Alabama are currently without a reliable septic system.
Yet, in April, following the termination of the justice department settlement, a spokesperson said that under state law the installation of sanitation systems was outside the agency's authority or responsibility, but it would continue the work 'until appropriated funding expires'. After that, the ADPH will only provide support and technical assistance to 'other organizations that may choose to engage in this work'.
It's unclear whether the ADPH will restart enforcement of sanitation laws that could result in criminal charges, fines, jail time and potential property loss for poor residents.
About 30 miles (50km) south-east from Hope is an idyllic cul-de-sac where four generations of the McPherson family live on 33 acres (13 hectares) in five homes with no septic tanks – or garbage collection.
Rattlesnakes, horseflies, mosquitoes and all sorts of other biting insects live in the prairie and surrounding woods where the sewage empties out. But the worst thing, according to Christopher McPherson, 54, is when the straight pipe gets backed up and they have to locate the blockage and flush it out: 'If you don't watch yourself, everything will shoot down with force and get all over you. If that happens, I take the water hose, some soap and bleach, and just make sure it don't get in your mouth.'
It's a beautiful spot, peaceful and sparkling green, but there's an unpleasant whiff that intensifies as the piercing sun heats the raw sewage seeping out of the pipe.
According to McPherson, who runs his own small handyman business, the family has been trying to secure help for at least 30 years, but something always goes wrong: the money runs out, or the project disappears. Three of the five homes were recently assessed and approved by the LCUWP, but there are many people in similar dire straits ahead of them – and Trump killing the settlement could mean a long wait until new donors come on board.
'It's wild to me that people don't think about the poverty side of America, because a lot of people here can barely make ends meet; some are living in tents out in the woods, begging for money so they can eat,' said McPherson. 'We have our own home, so I think we got it pretty good, but sewage is a basic thing everybody needs. Trump says he's trying to make America great again, but he's just making it hard for us. He's not really doing anything to help regular people.'
In a region where setbacks and resistance are the norm, Elis Bandy, 79, a lifelong Lowndes county resident and the LCUWP's in-house septic system expert, is disappointed but not surprised by the latest blow.
'Trump is going to be a dictator, that's always been his goal, so this ain't nothing surprising to me,' said Bandy, a Methodist pastor. 'But as Dr King said, we still gotta fight for our rights because it's being violated every day.' *Name has been changed